A Silent Conviction
by Aneta
Summary: And the only person who cares about what you did or did not do is yourself. And maybe that is why it hurts so much. -Kensi-centric. Post "Missing."


**Just my own interpretation of how some of the team members deal with their friend's 'missing' status.**

**Let me know what you think!**

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of these characters, nor do I own the plot of the episode 'Missing.' Everything pretty much belongs to CBS.

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They throw open the doors to a van that does not belong in a field so far away from the rush of human contact, and her heart twists into an unnatural position at the undeniable emptiness that is not Dom. He is not here, they are too late, and this is so much bigger than drug deals or grudges or blown surveillance ops. She closes her eyes and sees him staring back at her with the silent conviction of a lifeless man.

Her stomach clenches.

She is a logical agent, she is a fierce friend, and she is eternally hopeful that things will work out in their favor. But through her logic and loyalty and endless hope she cannot overlook the blood and the gunshots and all those dead faces. So many dead faces. And she knows that they are bad people. She knows that they would just as soon put a bullet through her heart as she would theirs, but she will never become used to pulling a trigger and ending a life. Eyes that are always accusatory, even in death. Men that take their secrets to the grave and use those stuttering last breathes on lies that lead them nowhere. But with this van and this field and the flickering lights of LA too far away to be comforting, she'd kill them all over again.

So she makes the drive to his apartment that is much father away than her own and cleans his dishes. Because when her hands working and her mind is focused, she finds it so much easier to pretend he's somewhere behind her and that maybe she's just lost a bet. But the pictures on the refrigerator and the messages on the phone do not go unnoticed, and she leaves before the walls can start closing in.

Sam continues to insist that he is missing, not dead.

But it _feels_ like death. Only now, she wakes up from many different nightmares of how, of why, and of who could possibly want to hurt a boy who loved too much and saw too little to be a threat to anyone. In terrible and scattered seconds of thought, she wonders if she might rather they have found his body in that godforsaken truck, because then there would be some broken kind of closure, and they would not spend their hours trying to avoid this kind of inevitability. Even if he did come home (_when_ he comes home, Sam echoes), there is so much that has already gone wrong. She knows that it is a long road, and that they are now in a race they did not even know existed before just now. There is so much ground to cover.

Callen pushes for a new agent, and Kensi is afraid that if he pushes any harder, Sam might say things he'll regret when it's over. He tells Hetty that she drinks straight from the bottle, but she silently thinks that she might be the only one there who does not. They have lost so many things.

So she stays late one evening, waiting until even Callen has packed up and headed off to wherever he's staying now, and puts away her young friend's things. Because there is a new member of the team coming, for however long this terrible ordeal drags on, and she refuses to let someone she does not trust handle these now-precious belongings. The papers are carefully stacked, and she makes sure that his not-quite-a-doll, action figure is safely secured on top. Then she tapes up the box, and takes it home. Leaving it by the front door so it is always ready to go back to the man who so unknowingly left it behind.

And in the following weeks, she learns to ignore the dust that has settled on his keyboard. Her stomach unclenches slightly when she thinks of that always-empty van and those dead, dead faces. But his blood is always there when she closes her eyes, and he is staring back, and she just cannot look away because he needs their help. But there is no evidence and there are no leads and she doesn't remember ever feeling this _helpless_ before. She wonders how much longer they can all keep showing up in the mornings pretending that the things they did not do are not suffocating them with every sleeping breath they take.

Nate says he did not know him very well. And she tells him not to go there because there are so many things that she already regrets. But there were stakeouts and pep talks and he still had so very far to go. But she wants so badly to believe that she knew him at all, that those months of training counted for something. There is someone that whispers in her ear when she thinks these things, reminding her in mocking, half-hearted tones that it does not matter if she knew him or not. When the breath leaves a throat for the last time, the only person who cares about what you did or did not do is yourself. And maybe that is why it hurts so much.

And she thinks of cold cement floors and the dirt that will never truly leave your skin and all those terrible moments when things could have ended differently. And she finds that there is a difference between living with regret and letting regret live with you. So she watches old movies where the good guys always win, and tries to forget that somewhere very far away from here, there is a man who is kind and so undeserving of these punishments. She used to think that she would just know when a friend died. Like a light switch would flick off in her chest and it would feel like someone had just punched her in the stomach.

But she finds herself rethinking so many things.

So there are new cases and new witnesses and for all she knows that van is still out where they left it, but cannot bring herself to go and look anyways. And they begin to move past the empty space around them a little more quickly, covering up old hurts with new plans and lost chances with new excuses. She wonders what it feels like to heal if you never even know that you're hurt.

And she finds that her twisted, wrenching heart never really leaves that dark and deserted field where everything finally went wrong.


End file.
